Following the Shenandoah Valley north & visiting Roanoke, Lexington, and Winchester, VA

Based on the fact that I have missed a month of blog posts, the following post comes with a disclaimer:

                        “We are back home in Massachusetts and have been for a month.

   The accounts and descriptions you are currently reading are

   from our travel journal and photos.”

We are traveling in a northeasterly direction as we follow the Shenandoah Valley on the Virginia side of the West Virginia state line. The Shenandoah Valley is such an interesting geographical land mass residing between two mountainous regions, that of the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east. Our trip back to New England found us stopping in Natural Bridge, VA, near Roanoke in the south, and then again in Winchester, VA in the north at the busy state intersection of Virginia, West Virginia & Maryland. These two stops in Virginia were of shorter duration but really allowed us to enjoy and explore the Valley. 

Also very interesting was the slow progression of blooming trees and flowers we found on our travels north. We really started to notice the blooming Pear trees with their bright white petals and the Redbud trees flashing those pink and white flowering buds in Pigeon Forge, TN.  We seemed to be following the seasonal progression of these flowering plants north for just about three weeks. Each new location we visited seemed to be just starting to bloom, with hints of green, pink, and yellow, but we were never around long enough to witness full bloom.

In Natural Bridge, VA we, of course, had to go to Natural Bridge State Park and walk the ¾ mile Cedar Creek Trail that leads under the most fantastic naturally occurring arch bridge in the world and on up to Lace Falls. Natural Bridge is a geological formation comprising a 215-foot-high natural arch with a span of 90 feet. It is situated within a gorge carved from the surrounding mountainous limestone terrain by Cedar Creek. Lots of picture taking moments were involved, and they all looked something like this picture of Judy standing under the bridge.  We got to the park early, and it was still quite chilly, which meant the trail and the park had fewer people. Then, in the afternoon, the bright sunshine and warmer weather brought people to the park in droves. Thankfully, we were on our way out to explore other trails in the park. We settled on a 4-mile hike along the Blue Ridge Trail, and scarcely encountered a soul.  All told, we walked almost 6 miles, and our legs were most definitely tired. 

Natural Bridge

Salt Peter Cave, Natural Bridge

The nice part about towing Neil the Northpoint (our camper) behind a truck and un-hitching at a campsite, is our ability to explore surrounding cities and towns.  A perfect example was our visit to Roanoke, VA, some 45 miles south of our campsite. Roanoke is a bustling city, and we started our exploration at the Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center in preparation for our tour of the city. To fully explore the city, Judy found online, and we signed up for, the Roanoke Downtown Food and Culture tour. Terri, our guide, and food connoisseur for the morning, provided a wonderfully colorful history of Roanoke, VA, which included information on the food & restaurant influences in the downtown area. This was as much a historical tour as a food tour. We heard about the history of many of Roanoke 's landmarks and learned how important the railroads were to Roanoke's development. Our tour ended atop the "Center in the Square" building with great views of the city.

Atop Market Square - view of Roanoke

Traveling 12 miles north of Natural Bridge, found us wandering through historic Lexington, VA.  After stopping in at the Lexington Visitor Center, we commenced our self-guided walking tour of the historic downtown area. The first thing to know about historic downtown Lexington was that in 1851 the town underwent a process of lowering the streets in order to provide for more efficient travel, as much of the town was built on extremely steep hills. Because of this, many buildings have an additional “full basement” that did not exist before 1851. It took nearly 12 years to complete the immense, pre-Civil War public works project. There is so much history in Lexington, I’ll just throw out a handful of places we visited on our walking tour:

• Colonel Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson’s home whilst he was an instructor at the Virginia Military Academy. 

• University Chapel of Washington and Lee University is a National Historic Landmark. It was constructed during 1867–68 at the request of Robert E. Lee, who was President of the school, and after whom the University is, in part, named. In the basement is a crypt (added after Lee's burial), which contains the remains of much of Lee's direct family, and outside lies the remains of Traveller, Lee’s favorite horse. 

• We walked through the campus and parade ground of the Virginia Military Academy which was founded in 1839.  A magnificent campus for one of the smallest of all the military academies in the US.  

• Concluding our tour at Memorial Hall of the Virginia Military Institute, which housed Virginia Military Institute Museum established in 1843, and considered to be the very first public museum in the state of Virginia.

Now you must be saying to yourself, “how does he (Steven) know so much about the Shenandoah Valley?  Because in Winchester, VA there is the formidable Shenandoah Valley Museum and Gardens. The Museum was a hotbed of activity when we first arrived, as there was an orchid convention and sale going on in one of the function rooms in the south wing.  Unfortunately, the magnificent Glenn Burnie House & Gardens were not open yet, as we had arrived at the Museum a week too early. Judy and I stopped in to look at the orchids before climbing the stairs to walk through the entire second floor Museum which is devoted to the Shenandoah Valley. Starting with the topography and environment, the Museum traces the history of the Valley from the indigenous tribes who first settled the Valley, to the European settlers, and through to the Revolutionary and Civil War period. There is a lot of great insight into the economics of living in the breadbasket of southern confederacy, to have it all destroyed by the Union armies and leaving such devastation that it took decades to recover. The Museum, The Glenn Burnie Estate, and the trails, all sit on a 90-acre parcel just outside Winchester, and Judy and I spent the entire afternoon either in the Museum or walking the trails throughout the park. 

Artistic bench called Daylilly Slumber @ Museum of Shenendoah Valley

And the town of Winchester, VA is no slouch when it comes to Civil War history. No, sir, this little town was the center of no fewer than three major battles during the Civil War, four other battles in the surrounding vicinity, and changed hands more than 70 times. In 1862, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson won the first battle of Winchester, securing the Shenandoah Valley for the south. This started a fierce back-and-forth between the North and South for the area concluding in September of 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant tasked Union General Philip Sheridan with securing Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley once and for all for the North. There is a fascinating museum called the Shenandoah Valley Civil War Museum located in a pedestrian park in Old Town Winchester that oozes Civil War information and artifacts, with a couple of very lively and informative museum curators.

The best part of our visit to Winchester, VA was getting to see Judy’s sister, Pam’s, family. Yes, after 2 months on the road, we were finally close enough for family to come visit us in the RV.   We just LOVE this picture and had to include it in our blog post.

Pam, Scott, Noah, Jen, and Chase

Alas, were just about home with only one more stop between Winchester, VA, and Massachusetts. The days are getting longer, and we are now eating meals outside the camper in the daylight, if the weather cooperates. We still have to run the furnace at night to keep the camper warm, but the season is definitely transitioning, and we just keep following spring flower blooms north. The next, and last, stop is in central Pennsylvania, a small town called Manheim, PA. One of the border towns to Hershey and Lebanon, PA, and which also happens to be the place where my brother Paul and sister-in-law Jen now live. You may remember them from an earlier blog post (“A tour of the Industrial Mid-West. Not the most romantic starting point. Dated 7/1/2023) when we had planned on visiting them in St. Louis, Missouri, until they moved to Pennsylvania a couple of months before our intended visit with the RV in tow. Not this time!  Let’s see what fun we can have in the chocolate capital of Pennsylvania as we tell…. the Rest of the Story